


sharp edges have consequences

by watfordbird33



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Bipolar Cassian, Cassian "Cass" Andor, F/M, Linkin Park - Freeform, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11795079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: He rescues the coffee. Cold. His head is pounding Bennington and he can’t think and he wants to lie back down and go to sleep. He wants to cut his hands on all the broken glass. Instead, he drains the coffee and puts the mug down on his desk.“Cass,” she says.Tact’s failed, so. “Get the hell out of my house.”Her jaw firms up. She’s really not unattractive, even with those shadows underneath her kohl-streaked eyes. He wishes, suddenly, a contrast to earlier, that they’d fucked last night, just so she wouldn’t be here, standing her ground. Then he’d be alone with the bottles and the Linkin Park and he wouldn’t have to lie.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This idea struck me last night and I couldn't get out from under it. No update plan or schedule. There might not even be an update at all.
> 
> Warnings for self-harmful thoughts, frank discussion of suicide, mental illness, mentions of sexual content, and mentions of alcohol. This is for Chester Bennington and Linkin Park. Your music is an inspiration to us all, and Chester, you will be missed forever.

He wakes up at five a.m. to a Linkin Park headache and a cup of coffee gone stagnant on the chair. When he props himself up on his elbows, his brain’s like cobblestones backed over wrong, and it takes him a moment to reconcile all the bits and pieces of his study, flung askew.

Once his hangover’s settled a bit, he gets off the couch and reorients himself upright. Chester Bennington’s still crooning in the far lobes of his brain _.  _ He wants an off switch on the broken hearts, but it’s hard to find one when it’s dark and the music isn’t real. Instead, he fumbles for a light. His fingernails catch on the plaster. He should have trimmed them yesterday.

The girl unfolds with the lamp and the chorus, perfectly synchronized. Her appearance is so natural that he’s not even thrown. He’s only shocked by the fact that she’s wearing clothes--cropped leggings, and a sweatshirt nearly to her knees. Maybe one of his. In the half-light he can’t tell.

“Did we--?” he asks her, unfinished, a reflex.

“You don’t remember?”

“I assume I was drunk.”

“You were,” she says. “You were really angry. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to leave you here alone.”

Cushions strewn. Bottles smashed. The most recent of Linkin Park. He knows the contours of this cycle and how it starts and ends.

“We didn’t,” she tells him, and he’s glad they didn’t, even though she’s beautiful in a sort of chopped-off fascinating way. He wasn’t in his right mind. 

(He never is.)

“Good,” he says. It comes out like a sigh. “You can go home now”

“Cass--”

“Cassian, please.”

“Cass is cute.”

He’s so tired. He tries to guess. “Amanda? Leah?”

“Jyn.”

“Right. Jyn. You can go home now. I’m all right.”

“I don’t think I can,” she says. “I don’t think you are.” She puts the toe of her right foot on the calf of her left leg; balances, frowns. She’s cute when she frowns. Big eyes, long legs. He wishes this was not the beginning of a cycle.

“It’s a bad time to get attached,” he tries. 

“To you? I don’t know what the hell you mean, but I’m attached to making sure you don’t kill yourself out here where nobody’s around to care.”

He rescues the coffee. Cold. His head is pounding Bennington and he can’t think and he wants to lie back down and go to sleep. He wants to cut his hands on all the broken glass. Instead, he drains the coffee and puts the mug down on his desk.

“Cass,” she says.

Tact’s failed, so. “Get the hell out of my house.”

Her jaw firms up. She’s really not unattractive, even with those shadows underneath her kohl-streaked eyes. He wishes, suddenly, a contrast to earlier, that they’d fucked last night, just so she wouldn’t be here, standing her ground. Then he’d be alone with the bottles and the Linkin Park and he wouldn’t have to lie.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” he asks her.

She smiles.

He rubs his jaw and curses. More of a habit than any real antagonism: the words are as familiar as a cigarette before bed. 

“I’ll just sleep there,” she says, pointing back at the chair. “And we’ll see again, at a more human hour, if I still need to stay.”

“You don’t need to stay,” he mutters, though realistically he knows she does. His cobblestone brain is playing  _ Sharp Edges  _ and watching the squint-light off the bottle tops and if she leaves he’ll be in the bathroom tracing smokestains in the mirror and dissecting reasons not to cut deeper, not to just escape. “I’ll be fine on my own,” he lies.

“You won’t.”

She’s very matter-of-fact about it, which he appreciates, at a gut level. It is much harder to argue with someone who is matter-of-fact. Maybe his twisted fucked-up brain somewhere recognizes what’s best for him. When it’s not trying to cut his wrists.

“Do you want more coffee, Cass?”

“Cassian. Tea,” he mutters, conceding.

She knows it’s a concession because she gets this little side-smile, crooked and kind of sweet. She motions to him like she wants him to come into the kitchen with her.

“I’m not going to--”

“Just come on.”

He follows her in because it’s too early to protest and anyway her little side-smile was cute enough to make him think maybe there’s a razor-edge possibility he’ll get a kiss and no committment out of this. That’s the best he could hope for, now. Committment kicks his ass.

She makes him sit, knees nearly to chin, on the too-small barstool his best friend bought for him last year. It’s painted an absurd shade of orange that only Bodhi Rook could get away with, and even he is only saved by the fact that he was drunk at the time of purchase.

Jyn is frighteningly good at making tea.

“Do you make a lot of tea?” he asks her.

“I’m a tea fiend.” She turns; smiles. It’s disarming, and makes him want to put his arms up, like a shield. “I drink it constantly. I have one of those dorky thermoses--”

He wants to see it. “Did you bring it?”

“I don’t bring it on dates.” Then she flushes. “I mean, it wasn’t--”

“No, it’s okay,” he says, and then, softer, “I’m sorry I don’t remember. I wish I did.”

Her gaze is sharp and canny, and he lets her probe him. He’s not sure why. “Bipolar?”

He shrugs a yes.

“Counseling?”

“No.”

“Medication?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not hiding your pills because they make you”--emo voice; he almost laughs--“feel disconnected from the world?”

“I’m already disconnected from the world,” he says, with considerable cynicism. Linkin Park has dimmed to her voice. “I love my pills. They even me out.”

Her smile matches his derision. “No offense, love, but you don’t seem very evened out.”

“I have cycles,” he says. “I’m not doing so hot right now. And the water’s boiling.”

She turns, swears, lifts the kettle. He watches her ass with only the slightest twinge of shame. Her sweatshirt--definitely one of his, an old Red Sox thing with the hood cut jagged--has hiked up above her leggings, and he doesn’t really feel the need to tell her.

It’s the beginning of a cycle, he reminds himself. Get yourself the fuck together. 

But to be fair--he feels more evened out than he did last night, or when he just woke up. She’s having this effect like a lithium pill. Stimulation when he’s down, sedation when he’s up. He wants to tell her this, and rationalizes himself off the ledge.

“Were we listening to Linkin Park?” he asks, in lieu of a thank-you, when she sets the tea down in front of him. “Last night?”

Her eyes widen. There’s a clinging of mascara to her lower lashes, and he wants to reach out with a thumb and ease it away. “We were,” she says, relaxing, then, and disproportionately pleased. He can see it in the curve of her mouth and the lift of her shoulders as she pours a second cup and sits down across from him. Her barstool is less offending: blue instead of orange, and taller, so she looms over him like a witch. “They’re my favorite band.”

“And you like the new album?”

“It makes me cry.”

He nods, understanding this. On his down days One More Light makes him cry, too, when he has this full grasp of what it means, death, and suicide, and Chester Bennington’s light winked out just the same after all these hopeful lyrics he crooned. On his manic days he just feels sort of hungover.

“It’s different, though,” he says. “From all the others.”

“I know. Fresh. I thought--I thought it was going to save more lives.”

“And it did,” he tells her, reinforcing it with a meaningful tap on his wrist, where most of the scars are. He knows she sees them when her gaze flicks down, even though there’s no little startling intake of breath. She’s very calm when she looks back up.

“But after he--”

He appreciates that she says nothing about the scars. 

“That was a separate issue.”

He drinks his tea. She looks vaguely offended. She hasn’t touched hers, despite her claims of being a tea fiend.

_ “Issue?”  _ she says.

“That was badly phrased.”

“It wasn’t an issue, Cass, it was depression, and suicide. Don’t throw it around like it’s nothing.”

He snaps. Down too early. Up too late. “I  _ know  _ it’s not nothing.”

She looks as if she’s about to leave (white-faced, frightened) and he freezes. With a kind of strung-tight patient calm it’s nearly impossible to muster, he eases his hands from around his mug and attempts to settle his rage. Was he this angry last night? Angrier? He can’t believe she stayed.

“I know,” he says again, smoother. “I know.”

She nods, grip relaxing on the edge of the counter. “I was just going to wonder if they lost more lives than they saved after Chester died.”

“I don’t think so.” He displays the scars again, and this time she reaches out and puts her hand on them. Her skin is light and cool and hypnotizing, and he wants her all over him. “I think now a lot of people listen to stay alive because he couldn’t.”

She smiles, and he realizes what he’s just said is poetry. If it was the end of a cycle instead of the beginning, he’d be jumping up for a notebook and pen. He’d be blasting music in the background and forgetting reasons not to have sex with this beautiful girl. For once, he’s glad it’s the beginning. He can keep himself more under control.

“Would you like real clothes?” he asks her, apology, confession. “We can go out for breakfast.”

“At five a.m.?”

“Almost six, now,” he dismisses. “Go find something in my closet, and I’ll sweep up.”

Before she gets up, she looks at him: a long, slow, level look, like a warning. “And you’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” he tells her. 

And he will. For now, it’s not a lie. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *casually appears after weeks of being active on other fandoms and being a terrible procrastinator* *throws crappy chapter* *ends fic* *runs*
> 
> Same trigger warnings as the last chapter. Sorry this went nowhere. It was an interesting idea for me, though, so I might end up doing something with it in the future. 
> 
> RIP Chester Bennington. This story was for you, and I don't own any of your lovely lyrics that I've used within it.

She comes out in his favorite dark button-up, soft from use, and a dress over her arm that he wants to see her in. She’s put her hair up, too: knotted the little gentle curls into submission and tamed them in a knot.

“Done?” she asks him.

“Nearly.”

She takes the broom from him--his hands are shaking; he didn’t realize it--and sweeps the last few bottles up. There’s a ring on her middle finger that sparkles as she tips the shards into the trash.

He finds himself looking at the dress on her arm, as she reaches for the Windex and paper towels. It’s gorgeous. He can see that even with the crumples: curvy and purple, with the shoulders cut out. He wonders if that’s what she wore last night, with the leggings underneath, and feels this pulse of shame for the condition of his own clothes. Sweat-streaked, vomit-stained. 

“Now  _ you  _ go change,” she says, looking at him, like she knows.

So he does. He takes his pill. Showers, and washes his hair, and styles it down the way that hides the worry in his brow. He wishes he had time to shave. Even washed, he looks unkempt. He slips on his best jeans to compromise. 

“Ready?” Jyn says, when he comes back downstairs. 

She’s watching him; he can tell even when he turns to the wall to knock the light switch off. Maybe appreciative? He kind of hopes so. (Thinks: maybe, when this is over.)

“Ready,” he tells her.

They take his car. She says he drove her last night, though he has no memory. She sits with her knees tucked up endearingly small, her elbow on the door, her gaze straight ahead. He aches to reach for her hand.

“What’s open?”

“Not much,” he admits, and they laugh a little, comfortably. He realizes his scars are face-up on the center console.

“All-night diner?”

“There’s a crappy one up north...or McDonald’s.”

_ “So _ appealing.”

“All-night diner, then?”

“Affirmative,” he says, pitching his voice low, and she laughs. He likes her laugh.

He parks a few blocks away from the diner, and they walk up together, and find a seat in the back. She shows him how her legs stick to the seats even through her leggings, and he winces in sympathy at her. “Jeans, next time,” he says, and finds his voice daringly calm, even with  _ next time,  _ which is a promise. And he thinks she knows.

He lets her order for him, and when it comes, it’s huge. He tells her he can’t eat it.

“Yes, you can,” she says.

So he does, uncomplaining. She steals a few mouthfuls, but other than that, he eats the whole thing. The pill’s kicked in, and it feels...good. It feels really, really good.

“That was nice, right?” Jyn says, when they’re both finished, and they’ve stacked their silverware in neat parallel lines. Her mother has clearly taught her well.

_ “Fantástico,”  _ he says;  _ “ _ _ delicioso _ ; thank you.”

She wipes her mouth and smiles. “Spanish?”

“Native speaker,” he says.

“That would be the accent.”

“Insurmountably sexy and all that.”

She laughs again. Reaches for the bill just as he does, and their hands collide. He almost pulls back, but then he doesn’t, because he was the one who fucked last night up for her, and he wants to make it all right.

“On me.”

“Fine,” she says, releasing. Rolling her eyes.

“Nice try, love,” he tells her. It’s her pet name, but it fees sweet in his mouth, on his tongue. “I wrecked your night, so I’ll take this one.”

As he’s signing, he feels her gaze on him, razor-sharp. She opens her mouth a little, and then closes it, and then says all in a rush, “Were you going to? Kill yourself, I mean?”

“Last night?”

“Yeah.”

He slides the faux-leather sleeve to the edge of the table, leans back in the booth, and considers this. He doesn’t look at her. He’s afraid of what he’ll see.

“No,” he says, finally, when the silence has stretched long enough.

“But you’ve wanted too--before--”

“Always at the beginning of cycles--” he says, talking over her. “Never at the end.”

“And you hurt--”

He tries to steady his jaw, make his words final. “Yes. I wanted to last night. And I have before.”

Scars urpright on the console, gleaming.

“The bottles,” she says. Not a question.

“Yes.”

She reaches across the table to find his hand. Her fingers are small and they slot in between his perfectly, like a prison-bar grid. He has to close his eyes for a moment because the depth of the feeling is so exquisite. Because he doesn’t want to go back to being asleep.

“Cass,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“This is genetic?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know my parents.”

She nods, brisk again. Businesslike.  _ “Sorry For Now.  _ Isn’t that the one about absent parents?”

“It’s not Chester’s.”

“No.” She laughs, makes an awkward, self-conscious hand gesture. “The other guy. I can never remember his name.”

“Right,” he says, finds himself smiling. “Right. The other guy.”

The waitress slips by their table and takes the check. Jyn lets go of Cassian’s hand. She reaches for her bag on the ground beneath the table.

“Back home?” he asks her. It’s almost seven.

“Oh, you want--” She reappears, flushing. “We’re going back?”

“Unless you--” He fumbles. “Unless you don’t want to, or--”

“No, I’d love to. I was just--surprised.”

They get up, and she slides the strap of her bag across her shoulder. He wants to slide his hand across her shoulder exactly where the strap went, palm to collarbone.

But.

It’s the beginning.

And this is a no.

(She looks at him, and he fucking falls apart.)

 

Back home the sun’s coming up, so they sit on the front porch in the middle of the cornfields, all alone. Jyn gets her phone out and reads Cassian some vampire book aloud in her fluid voice. He absorbs about thirty percent of the actual content.

She stops around chapter three, and turns on Linkin Park instead. It’s Sharp Edges, and the guitar’s everywhere, that quick-chop sound of cut-off acoustic strings. They’re side by side on the porch swing, and Cassian closes his eyes.

_ Mama always told me don’t you run _

_ Don’t you run with scissors, son _

_ You gonna hurt someone _

_ Mama told me look before you leap _

_ Always think before you speak _

_ And watch the friends you keep _

“Kiss me,” Jyn says suddenly, in the middle of the bridge.

And he wants to. He wants to so bad.

“I can’t,” he tells her, shifting so he’s facing her, their biceps touching on this porch swing in the center of nowhere. This house he built himself. This haven. This place he goes to break.

“Don’t worry about the fucking consequences, Cass.”

Which is ironic, since her jaw’s so sharp, and the song’s going,  _ Have consequences,  _ and she’s every sharp edge he’s cut himself on; she’s the beginning of his cycle and the end. Consequences. All the time and everywhere.

“I--”

She puts her hand on his cheek, fingers spread.

_ Should have played it safer from the start _

_ Loved you like a house of cards _

_ Let it fall apart _

The best of Chester, reed-thin and ghostly now, gone.

He leans into her touch and she pushes her other hand around his neck, to the back, slides her fingers down under his shirt collar and tightens her grip. He closes his eyes and they kiss in such soft golden silence that he can’t believe that this isn’t his first one, that this won’t be his last.

_ These are years you’re never getting back _

_ Stay along the beaten path _

_ Never listened when she said: _

_ Sharp edges _

_ Have consequences _

_ Guess I had to find out for myself _

“You bastard,” she says, when they’re done kissing, and the song’s faded out just to guitar and pleading voice. “You absolute beautiful fuck-up.”

“Don’t let go,” he whispers, and she holds on to him until the shaking’s stopped.


End file.
